


Musketeer Garrison, 12 October 1637

by Anima Nightmate (faithhope)



Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [39]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Adolescence, Banter, Cadets, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Found Family, Franco-Spanish War, Gen, Gender Non-Conforming Character, Implied Masturbation, Military, Military Training, Military Uniforms, Some Historical Fudging, Tailoring, Thirty Years War, Toxic Masculinity, Wartime, Wholesome Masculinity, allyship, implied disordered eating, see notes for specific content notes/ warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24306673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate
Summary: Time for a fitting revelation.*Another installment in the long series of pieces based around the black box that is the Musketeers during the Spanish War.
Relationships: Brujon & Clairmont, Constance & Brujon
Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [39]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/944322
Comments: 5
Kudos: 9





	Musketeer Garrison, 12 October 1637

**Author's Note:**

> I have posted content notes in the [end notes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24306673#work_endnotes), as a balance between being supportive and supplying any measure of surprise. If issues around gender expression and non-conformance are potentially triggering to you, please skip to the end notes and decide whether you would like to read this. Self-care is super-important. If you feel I need to change how I do this warning, please let me know and I’ll make the relevant amendments.
> 
> This is the first time I’ve got someone in for sensitivity reading before publishing. It won’t be the last, I’m sure. Many thanks to [renesaramis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/renesaramis/pseuds/renesaramis) for the beta, and the cheerleading, which was vital and wonderful. Many thanks also to [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig) for further cheerleading, and for incredibly useful advice about how to make a doublet (including actual patterns!). Go read/ listen to their work, please.

“Oi! Oi, Brujon!”

He closes his eyes for a long blink, taking and holding a deep breath.

“Hey, don’t worry about it,” says Clairmont, quietly, hand on his upper arm like a pauldron. As soon as he’s summoned this image, he has to suppress the urge to grin like an idiot, just nodding up at him.

“Oi! Didja hear me?” pants Charbonneau as he skids to a halt.

“Half the garrison heard you. As usual. What is it?”

“Madame wants ya.”

“Okay.”

“Now, though?”

“Yeah, alright.” He locks eyes with Clairmont for a moment and they nod wordlessly at each other. He heads towards the stairs up to her office.

“She ain’t there,” calls Charbonneau.

He rolls his eyes and sighs. “Where the fuck is she, then?”

“Language!” Charbonneau grins, as unabashed as ever. “Said to send you down the Quartermaster’s.”

“Fine.” As he trudges off, he wonders what ( _the fuck_ , tugging at the badge of words, enjoying them) she wants, and, hard on the heels of that, whether… no, _how much_ trouble he’s in.

As he makes his way past towards Quartermaster’s desk, boots scuffing on the floorboards that are always in need of a careless boy to sweep them, he hears her voice call out: “Is that Brujon?”

“Yes, Madame!” He casts about.

Her head pops through a door he’s never paid any attention to before. “Come through, then.”

As he makes his way towards her, trying to gauge her mood and, specifically, her attitude towards him, she smiles tightly, says: “Come on, I’ll not beat you. It’s just about your doublet.”

If he’s honest, he’d prefer a beating, but trudges after her, chest tight, a sullen mess of fear and disappointment, and a horrible feeling he can barely define, though it feels a bit like being called to account, bidding something farewell, and, mixed in to make it all worse, somehow, a tiny dash of hope.

Several things are waiting to surprise him, and the first is how much light there is. He frowns up at it as the door closes firmly behind him.

“Light well,” she tells him briskly, but sounding pleased. “Very useful. I come down here,” she confides in a low voice, “when I want to get some needlework done and no-one interrupting me every five minutes.” Very faintly, footsteps and voices come through with the light. He grins uneasily at her, supposes that’s why the second surprising thing – a padded figure of a man – is propped in a corner.

And the third: a large mirror. He eyes it with distaste.

“I brought it from my old job – well, the one before last, I suppose. Did you know I was a dressmaker?”

“You told me,” he reminds her. There are papers laid on the large table next to the mirror, and strange-shaped pieces of undyed material that look a bit like the plates in armour.

Oh.

“So I did.” She tilts her head to one side, eyes flicking up and down, surveying him in this _useful_ light.

She taps just below her eye. “What happened here?”

His hand flinches up, but he stops it well before it gets to the bruise. “Accident, Madame.”

“Anything to do with the split lip on Dubois?”

“Couldn’t say, Madame.”

“Hmm.” She straightens her head, raises her eyebrows in her _we’ll say no more about it for now_ fashion. “Well, now,” she says, fists on her hips, “you weren’t here when I measured the rest of the lads for their doublets, and we’ve four weeks to go now, so we’d better get a move on.”

“Yes, Madame.”

She beckons him in that spare way she has, pointing to a spot just in front of her and near the horrible mirror. “Best light here. Now, all you have to do is mostly stand still, put your arms up when I tell you, and not wriggle or slouch, got that?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“And, for my sake, please try not to look as though you’re heading to your own execution.”

He frowns a kind of side-eyed smile at her before he can help it, and she smiles back at him, still somehow serious though.

“There, that’s a bit better. More of that, and we’ll get on fine. Shouldn’t take long, just let me know if anything pinches. Oh, and take your jerkin off. Don’t worry about the shirt – I need to make you something that fits over one, in any case.”

Moving slowly, reluctantly, he wriggles out of the garment, and she takes it and casually drapes it over the shoulder of the model man. “You’ll be making it, Madame?”

“We don’t have much time to spare,” she replies, absently, pulling out a length of cord and walking around him. “Square your shoulders.” He wriggles them up and up. “That’s good. Keep your back straight, like you were on inspection.” Which he is, he thinks, swallowing, but says nothing, feeling her touch both shoulders lightly, then the nape of his neck and just below his waist, then pressure down his neck from the base of his skull to his collar, hearing her muttering to herself. She walks to the shape table and uses her cord to make marks on it. He dodges his own gaze in the mirror, focuses on her hands, the curve of her back.

Next she has him hold his arms out – _nice and still!_ – to either side, shoulder height, hands flat. “Could be worse,” she twinkles from behind him, “I could have two of Monsieur Fabron’s weights for you.” He grunts reluctant humour at that. More muttering, more notes on the parchment. “Now bend your arms at the elbows. Good.” He is duly measured shoulder to elbow.

“Now some of the lads,” she says, absently smiling as she turns to look him up and down, making another note, “were worried about the colour, but I can’t see you being fussed.”

“Well, they’ve all got to look the same, Madame. They’re like a uniform.”

“Exactly that. The badges are pretty good, but this is better. Also: they’ll actually keep you dry and warm.”

It’s a thin thing, but he finds himself chuckling with her. When Madame is in a good mood, she likes to spread it around. And when in a bad one, of course.

“You can put your arms down now.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“No need. Now. Collar.”

Her cord describes a couple of loops about his neck, high and low, and another down to his collarbone. More notes. He swallows when her back is turned, feels sweat spring up, his chest fill with ice.

“Alright, just three more to go.”

“Right.” His voice is shaking. _Fuck!_

“Got to give this plenty of room for you to grow into, and it needs padding, of course, so I’m being generous with the measurements, just so you know. Until you fill out a bit,” his eyes close for a minute – he hates that phrase, “it’ll be a bit loose on you, I shouldn’t wonder. Stand still now.”

She’s very close. Close enough to smell her, all fresh and bright. They’re nearly of a height. And he’s taller! How has he not noticed that before now?

“Hips.”

“Right.”

“Lift your hands?”

“Right, sorry.”

“No need.” She bends and loops and nods, all impersonal, and turns to make a note. He nearly runs, can feel his legs shaking from the wanting of it. But there’s that sharp little sliver of hope, pinning him in place.

“Waist.” She turns back, and he raises his hands a little further, obediently, legs and gut at war with each other.

Another note. “How old are you, Brujon?”

“F-fourteen, Madame d’Artagnan.”

“Right.” There’s an odd note to it.

Shit.

“And the last one,” she says, breezily. “Chest.”

He stares over her shoulder at the shapes on the table as he lifts his arms higher again, feels his heart pounding, juddering in his chest, all out of step like Charbonneau when he insists on having a go on the drum, all light and faint, like it’s beating air, then big, heavy, giant footsteps, all the blood in his body thumping through with each one.

She steps in, now horribly, horribly close, practically up against him, the noose of her cord pulling about him, describing him in numbers he can’t fake. “Deep breath in?”

He hauls in a miserable squeak of it.

“No good,” she says, of course she does. “Big, deep breath – deepest you can make.”

He does his best, feels the strain of it.

“Hmm.” He closes his eyes, feels her step back. “Brujon, look at me, will you?”

With every atom of will, he forces his eyes open, stares at her. And all he sees…

All he sees is…

Christ.

All he sees is a bottomless kind of compassion.

“You knew!” he blurts out, arms slamming down to cross his chest, hearing his voice crack.

“Well,” she says, “I had a damned good guess.” She steps back again, cocks her head to one side again, pert as a blackbird. “And the thing is: we need that doublet to fit well, with plenty of room for growth, so are you going to take those bandages off for a really deep breath so I can measure your proper capacity, or are you going to waste my time pretending you’ve cracked your ribs?”

He blinks at her. “Uh. What?” Her eyes narrow. “What, Madame? I– er, I mean: um. What?”

She laughs then, shoulders shaking, and it’s merry and kind and, he finally sees, loose with some kind of relief. _She’s_ been nervous this whole time too?

“It can’t be comfortable,” she says, sobering, but still with that new relaxation running through her voice. “And I can’t see it being healthy for you to wear like that all the time while running around. Come on. I can help. Or I can look the other way for a while – whatever you’re most comfortable with.”

“Madame,” he manages at last. “You– you’re not chucking me out?”

She frowns immediately. “Why on earth should I?” She puts her hands on her hips again, tuts a sigh. “I swear to Saint Monica – as soon as a body starts training to become a Musketeer, its brain departs out the window. Why, in the name of God, would I be _measuring you for a doublet I intend to make myself_ , if I was set on throwing you out of the regiment? Do you have any _idea_ how busy I am?!”

And then, the shameful thing happens. He can feel his face heating and his throat swelling, and his breath starting to come in little jerks.

“Oh! Oh, Brujon! Don’t take on so!”

He backs, hunching a little, left arm over his belly, swipes the back of his right hand viciously across his eyes.

He hears her come closer. “Come on, you idiot…!”

“Shut up!” he croaks. “Just shut up!”

“Don’t _you_ tell me to shut up!” she retorts, and his head snaps up, feeling anger drop across him, balling his fists as he takes a single step forward ahead of his volition, before he remembers: _This is Madame d’Artagnan!_ But she’s grinning, bright-eyed, hard, and proud, right into his eyes, and he scowls, shuffles into an approximation of parade attention, focus drifting to the wall behind her.

“Very good,” she approves. “From fear to sorrow to rage to some kind of disciplined stance in a matter of minutes. I think you’re going to do well, son.”

His eyes, puzzled, slide under his lowered brows towards her.

“What else am I going to call you? I mean: up to you…”

“No, that’s fine,” he mumbles, eyes sliding back towards the wall. It’s more than fine. It’s–

“Now, are you going to take off that binding, or are we going to go another few rounds of this?”

“No, Madame. I mean: yes, Madame. I’ll take it off,” he adds.

“Want some help?”

“Er. No.”

“Alright, I’ll just be over here.”

She walks back over to her table, bends over the parchment and linen shapes, making notes, holding them up to the light, muttering to herself, utterly absorbed within moments. He pulls his shirt out of his breeches, and reaches up to untangle the linen strips. He doesn’t know what he’ll say if she asks where he got them from, decides he’ll face that if it comes, feeling that shard of hope edging its way broader in him, corners softening as it does. Cursing under his breath, he manages to grab the trailing ends awkwardly and then starts to fumble the long set of sewn-together lengths loose. His chest knows what it’s about as soon as the pressure starts to ease, and pulls in deeper and deeper breaths. The last few weeks stare at him, frantic and torturous, and he feels like an absolute idiot for one bottomless, despairing moment, until it’s like he lands safe, resting on the knowledge that, well, Madame thinks all cadets are idiots, and that’s never stopped her helping any one of them, with bandages, scolds, or hugs.

He spools the lengths over his hands, thinking hard, calls out: “Ready, Madame.”

“Good,” she says, barely looking up from her calculations. “Come and step back over here where the light is good, will you?”

He stands, feeling a little strange, to be known and yet not unmade, trying not to see how the shirt hangs, but wanting to.

“I’ll take this, shall I?” She reaches for the linen and he, nodding, with a very odd sense of relief and disappointment mingled, lets it drop into her hand. “Okay. Now. Arms up; big, deep breath in for me.”

He does. Three impersonal measurements later and he’s swaying a little on the spot, drained. She’s making notes and–

“Padding?”

“Hmm, what’s that?” She continues scribbling, turning her shapes and adding notches.

“You said padding, Madame.” His voice sounds hoarse and thin to his own ears.

“Oh. Yes, well, all the doublets are going to have padding in them – they won’t stop a blade, but they’ll soften a blow. Yours will need to be… cleverer than others, is all.”

He imagines himself buttoned up, safe, swathed in friendly, wise, flattened lines that draw the eye, closes his own on a small smile that feels something like a weight dropping.

“You’ve been panicking since I said you were all going to be measured, haven’t you?” She’s still looking down, seemingly entirely focused on the work in front of her.

“A bit, yeah. But. Well–” How to talk about the changes? How to talk about the rebellious softness springing up? How to talk about running harder, eating less, until he felt like shit and gave that up, feeling shifts that were different from what everyone else has been showing off.

“How are you managing bathing?”

He shrugs. “It’s not hard.” He’s got a string of techniques down for that and the jakes now. Every day might be the day it all fucks up, but he’s been living with that for a while now, and today feels like a message, somehow.

Something else occurs to him: all the missed mass measuring sessions. “You sent me on those errands on purpose!”

“Oh. Yes. Well, I assumed you’d prefer it this way. Was I wrong?” And she turns this pretend-innocent smile his way, bland as butter, and he can’t help but cough a kind of laugh.

“What?”

“It’s just. That’s really devious, Madame.”

“Well, you sound like you approve.”

He nods, smirking.

“I have to ask, though,” she says, sobering, and his heart sinks. “How old are you really?”

“Er, sixteen, I think, Madame. Probably? Not really sure anymore.” He’s been living this reality for so long, the early lies have become a kind of truth through repetition.

She takes a deep breath, face twisting a little. “Have you started, er…”

“No!” he says before she can finish it. “No, not– not yet. Er. No. I, um, I–”

“Then, if you’ll let me, I can probably help with that, when the time comes. And _this_ ,” she lifts the linen strips, “is pretty decent, but I could probably make you something a lot better.”

He frowns, feeling a little sick, like when you’re really hungry and the clouds passing across the sun seem to batter at you with a texture of their own. Like the one time he was on a boat. Christ. Like–

“Put your head down,” her voice is saying through the clanging in his ears, distorted and watery. “Hands on your knees like you just took a hard blow. Breathe for me, will you?” And she counts him in and out like Fabron that time, Clairmont dancing foot to foot and looking, when he finally peered up at him, sicker and paler than he felt himself.

“Mmh.”

“Any better?”

“Mh.”

“We should get you sat down.”

“Pl–” he clears his throat, swallows, tries again: “Please don’t make a fuss, Madame.”

“Alright,” and her voice is mildly amused, somehow. “Don’t let anyone tell me they don’t breed Musketeers stubborn as all hell. But I’m fetching you some water, and you’ll drink it, like it or not.”

He grunts at that, hears the splash and clink, takes it when it turns up in front of his eyes, and straightens, “Slowly!” drinking steadily.

“Better?”

“Yeah. Yes, Madame.”

“Alright then.”

In the end, she leaves the room entirely so that he can rebind himself, but not without imparting some words about how breathing is pretty damned important, and he stretches accordingly first, knotting tighter at the end to compensate. He can’t quite allow himself to think about her helping him with something better, but he’s just going to let the notion sit somewhere quietly rather than walling it away.

Later that night, when the rustles and mutters and rhythmic shuffles start, and Dubois mutters: “Look, it’s no odds to me if you’ve got a small cock,” he finds it easy to blank out that bruising near-miss and say:

“Either way, I don’t fight with my cock, so what’s it to anyone here?”

“If you’re fighting with your cock,” whispers someone who sounds a lot like Dupont, “you’re doing it wrong!”

And the sniggers only rise when he comes back with: “Dubois fights with his. I bet it’s never seen anything as ugly as his hand.”

“Never looked in a mirror then, has it?”

“Odds against it seeing anything else are pretty long,” adds Clairmont, “so it’d best get used to it.”

“Better big and ugly,” manages Dubois, “than small and pretty.”

“That’s not what your sister says,” he returns, and revels in the hoots and hisses that follow, deliberately turning on his side, away from Dubois, and burying his grin in his pillow.

It’s a lot easier to sleep, tonight, than it has been in a long while.

**Author's Note:**

> #### Content Notes
> 
> This story contains the following, more specific themes which some might want warning about. Spoilers abound:
> 
>   * a transmasculine character (or at the very least gender non-conforming character who has been passing until now)
>   * chest-binding and mention of some of the issues that might come of it
>   * implied query about menstruation (or, more specifically, menarche)
>   * very heavily implied body dysphoria
>   * implied issues around bathing/ using public toilets
> 

> 
> (If I am missing any warnings here, please let me know and I’ll add.)
> 
> Not knowing any of the terms that might have been in circulation about being a transmasculine person in 17th Century France/ Europe in general (at least that aren’t heavily derogatory), I have chosen to believe that the characters concerned (transmasculine person and ally) do not have the vocabulary themselves, but that everyone here is trying their best, one under an imperative that brooks no other course of action but to be truly themself as long and as hard as they can, the other to be as supportive as possible.
> 
> On that topic, please note that Constance is trying her best, but does ask a particular question (about menstruation/ menarche) that really, you shouldn’t, unless you’re a trans person’s physician (and even then only if it’s relevant), sexual partner or, more importantly, they’ve brought it up themself.
> 
> I am not a transmasculine person myself, but I am gender nonbinary (oouff, sudden realisation of coming out in this persona, and how odd that is…), and I’ve applied some of my personal experience combined with _asking a lot of people_ about how to do this sensitively. If I have messed up in any way, please let me know and I’ll do my best to amend where feasible.
> 
> I have never been looking forward to posting something on here with such a wild mix of emotions. Okay, if you’d like and haven’t already, please go back up and read the story, or move along. This topic is going to be touched on at least once more, reasonably explicitly, in this arc, within a few "episodes" (26th October 1637 is the one to watch for next) and I’ll do my best with the sensitivity and content notes then as well.
> 
> #### Other Notes
> 
> Anyone who would like to have a go at me introducing a non-canon trans character (specifically by "transing" [shudder] a canon character) to this fandom would be well-advised to have a word with themself before cracking into the comments box. Besides, why are you reading a very queer, polyamorous take on The Musketeers if you’re a transphobe? You’re only going to be disappointed, quite honestly.
> 
> #### Historical Notes
> 
>  _Did you know_ that people didn’t use tape measures (or any other kind of standardised measuring tools), as far as we can tell, in tailoring until something like the late 18th/ early 19th Century? I spent _far_ too long researching this, until bashing this out with [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig) gave me a means to have Constance measure Brujon for his doublet. Thimblerig also confirmed/ added to which measurements would need to be done. Any errors are mine, not theirs.
> 
> Did you also know that people started menarche a _lot_ later in the past than they generally do now, even 100-200 years ago? Handy graph [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menarche#Changes_in_time_of_average_age).


End file.
